“That’s all I was talkin’ about,” Florence added.  “Just about how you knew you had such pretty eyes.  Say not so, Herbert!  Say not so!”

“Look here!” he said.  “When’d you see Patty again between this afternoon and when you came over here?”

“What makes you think I saw her?”

“Did you telephone her?”

“What makes you think so?”

Once more Herbert gulped.  “Well, I guess you’re ready to believe anything anybody tells you,” he said, with palsied bravado.  “You don’t believe everything Patty Fairchild says, do you?”

“Why, Herbert!  Doesn’t she always tell the truth?”

“Her?  Why, half the time,” poor Herbert babbled, “you can’t tell whether she’s just makin’ up what she says or not.  If you’ve gone and believed everything that ole girl told you, you haven’t got even what little sense I used to think you had!” So base we are under strain, sometimes—­so base when our good name is threatened with the truth of us!  “I wouldn’t believe anything she said,” he added, in a sickish voice, “if she told me fifty times and crossed her heart!”

“Wouldn’t you if she said you wrote down how pretty you knew your eyes were, Herbert?  Wouldn’t you if it was on paper in your own handwriting?”

“What’s this about Herbert having ’pretty eyes’?” Uncle Joe inquired, again bringing general attention to the young cousins; and Herbert shuddered.  This fat uncle had an unpleasant reputation as a joker.

The nephew desperately fell back upon the hopeless device of attempting to drown out his opponent’s voice as she began to reply.  He became vociferous with scornful laughter, badly cracked.  “Florence got mad!” he shouted, mingling the purported information with hoots and cacklings.  “She got mad because I and Henry played some games with Patty and wouldn’t let her play!  She’s tryin’ to make up stories on us to get even.  She made it up!  It’s all made up!  She——­”

“No, no,” Mr. Atwater interrupted.  “Let Florence tell us.  Florence, what was it about Herbert’s knowing he had ’pretty eyes’?”

Herbert attempted to continue the drowning out.  He bawled.  “She made it up!  It’s somep’n she made up her_self_!  She——­”

“Herbert,” said Uncle Joseph;—­“if you don’t keep quiet, I’ll take back the printing-press.”

Herbert substituted a gulp for the continuation of his noise.

“Now, Florence,” said Uncle Joseph, “tell us what you were saying about how Herbert knows he has such ’pretty eyes’.”

Then it seemed to Herbert that a miracle befell.  Florence looked up, smiling modestly.  “Oh, it wasn’t anything, Uncle Joseph,” she said.  “I was Just trying to tease Herbert any way I could think of.”

“Oh, was that all?” A hopeful light faded out of Uncle Joseph’s large and inexpressive face.  “I thought perhaps you’d detected him in some indiscretion.”

Florence laughed, “I was just teasin’ him.  It wasn’t anything, Uncle Joseph.”